College Stereotypes

Stereotypes are a form of prejudice everyone will once experience in their lifetime. Stereotypes are centered around an individual's race, gender, social class, religion, and age. They have been known to be elements people use to make judgments and subjectify people to one key feature. As Gordon Allport states, “ To state the matter technically, a noun abstracts from a concrete reality some one features and assembles different concrete realities only with respect to this one feature”(364). Mr.Allport’s words can be summed up to say stereotypes have been used as key fundamentals to associate one feature or aspect of a person with a group that represents it, typically in an unfavorable way.

In the essay The Way We Lie, Stephanie Ericsson writes that “All the ‘isms’-racism, sexism, ageism, et al.-are founded on and fueled by the stereotype and the cliché, which are lies of exaggeration, omission, and ignorance. They are always dangerous. They take a single tree and make it a landscape.” This quote is important due to the fact that stereotypes play a major role in many aspects of our society. In American society we have a tendency to pass judgment on people just because of a pre-existing stereotype that our society has formed on particular groups over the years. American Society tends to create stereotypes because of the simplicity it adds to our lives, but stereotypes can cause us to oversimplify the characteristics

Stereotypes have great impacts on people all over the world. One of the reasons why people believe stereotypes blindly is that they know less about the objects. In order to decline the uncertainty of this new object, people choose to believe the stereotypes to feel safer. For the purpose of understanding the world more objectively, we ought to treat stereotypes critically and at least not be convinced of stereotypes blindly anymore.

There are people who became successful in life that did not go to college and earn the fancy degrees that many can point out. Some may use this to their advantage and say that they become just like them, such as Michael Dell. He is the co-founder and CEO of the Dell incorporation. He started that company in his dorm room but dropped out of college at the age of 19.That was his first year attending college. Also another successful person that is well known is Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook and is the 400th richest American. He developed Facebook one year on summer vacation after borrowing money from Paypal’s co-founder Peter Theil; in 2008, Microsoft paid

Furthermore, stereotypes are used to increase an individual’s self-esteem and strengthen their social identity. Social identity theory contributes largely to the formation of stereotypes, as it states that a person’s social identity is formed from being part of a group. To justify one’s own group, they often pick out real or imaginary differences and flaws in other groups and compare those to their own group (Ford & Tonander, 1998). This led Ford

Stereotypes are socially constructed, over-generalized views regarding a particular group of persons with certain characteristics that are widely accepted, and usually expected, in a society. The dominant group of a certain society, which in this case is probably Caucasians and men, usually creates these social constructions. Claude M. Steele, a researcher from Stanford University, performed multiple research studies on the idea and psychological effects of stereotypes on its victims. In his studies, he coins the term “stereotype threat” as the “social-psychological predicament that can arise from widely-known negative stereotypes about one's group,” which implies that “the existence of such a stereotype means that anything one does or any of one's features that conform to it make the stereotype more plausible as a self-characterization in the eyes of others, and perhaps even in one's own eyes” (Steele 797).

In life, there is a common ground on which most every person can relate. At one time or another, we have all been promoters of or victims of the unremitting nature of stereotypes. According to the Webster’s dictionary, a stereotype is defined as “a simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group.” Most stereotypes take on a negative form and are based on characteristics such as age, gender, race, status, and personal beliefs. Generally speaking, the greatest problem that arises with stereotypes is that they judge group of people by the characteristics and actions of their ancestors, rather than on an individual basis. More often than not, these assumptions will

Stereotypes can be defined as sweeping generalizations about members of a certain race, religion, gender, nationality, or other group. They are made everyday in almost every society. We develop stereotypes when we are unable or unwilling to obtain all the information we would need to make fair judgments about people or situations. By stereotyping, we assume that a person or group has certain characteristics. Quite often, we develop these ideas about people who are members of groups with which we have not had firsthand contact. Stereotyping usually leads to unfair results, such as discrimination, racial profiling, and unnecessary violence, all behaviors which need to be stopped.

Every day, millions of people judge others based on the stereotypes that apply to them, and some do not even know it. Most times these misjudgments are harmless, however, they can definitely be destructive. False judgments based on the stereotypes one perceives can make a total stranger seem like a menace to society. Although some say they do not act in this manner, the issue of stereotypes is large yet hardly admitted of use. In worse case scenarios the false misjudgement of a person or persons may lead to harmful actions. The most important lesson gained from reading Night, Of Mice and Men, and watching Angel of Bergen-Belsen is that one cannot use stereotypes to judge others because the victim could be the total opposite of the judgments

In this world there are many things people are guilty of, one of those guilt’s is stereotyping others , even if it wasn’t meant in a harmful are negative way we all have been a victim or the aggressor . This paper will discuses what stereotypes are, how they affect people and how stereotypes can affect society. However, the common factor in either situation is that no good comes from stereotyping others.

However, many of the group-based stereotypes are incorrect and generalizing and it promotes further misunderstandings and prejudice. Prejudice is having a false attitude toward an out-group in comparison to one’s in-group. Prejudiced individuals are prejudging without knowing any information about the “Others” (Rogers and Steinfatt).

Most people find stereotypes to be obnoxious, especially when they have to do with sensitive subjects like gender or race. “Stereotyping is a generalization about a group or category of people that can have a powerful influence on how we perceive others and their communication behaviors” (Floyd, 61). Because they underestimate the differences among individuals in a group, stereotyping can lead to inaccurate and offensive perceptions of other people. Although stereotypes are prevalent in almost every society, becoming aware of our perceptions of others, as well as differentiating between both positive and negative stereotypes can help us overcome those stereotypes.

The presences of stereotypes are overwhelming and are developed by both the environment a subject is raised in and their family. Stereotypes, which are pervasive throughout different societies, become intertwined in the collective values of the society as justification for all forms of social, economic, and political inequality among groups (Devine and Elliot 2000;Kaplan 2004; Operario and Fiske 2004). As people become more exposed to stereotypes they start to become a permanent part of a person’s life, they begin to stereotype themselves almost always involuntarily.

Generally, stereotypical representations tend to be harmless images but the issue rises from the lack of apathy from the public to refine theses stereotypes and this attitude comes with a range of consequences and impacts. Stereotypes are pervasive in the world and have devastating consequences. An example is people and the media being so quick to confuse Arabs, Muslims and Middle Easterners as the same.

Society has always retained deeply rooted stereotypes in all aspects of life. Whether it is prejudice due to color, creed, or gender, we cannot ignore the differential treatment of specific groups that occurs daily in our world. Although much has been done to alter our views on such matters, can we really suggest that society